MAGNUS was designed and built by myself and a work colleague for an engineering firm who needed a better way to manage their data.
​It took the two of us six months to build a prototype based upon Ruby on Rails, focused initially on contract management and task tracking. To achieve this we had to combine deep data analytics across multiple stove-piped data areas into a web based front end. 
Ultimately this was so successful that we were both offered Ph D's at the University of New South Wales.

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The Technical Challenge

Max and I started with the assumption that our responsibility was to develop a program which was accessible, understandable and made sense.
We achieved this by abstracting data into plots and graphs, choosing to display data contextually. As a result our users were able to focus their time and effort on the tasks and problems which were critical to the business.

The Tools

To achieve the challenge Max and I chose to use:

• Ruby on Rails - offering a robust, easily prototyped web based platforms, with gems (plugins) for just about everything http://rubyonrails.org
• Bit Bucket for code repository - meaning we could keep it all private https://bitbucket.org
  
• ​Heroku to publish production versions of the app. Heroku is amazing. It has everything you could ever want. https://www.heroku.com
  
• Sublime Text - one of the fastest, most useful text editors I've come across. https://www.sublimetext.com
• ​Programming Languages: Ruby, HTML, CSS, Javascript

At the end of our Alpha stage prototype, we had to convert our program into an ASP backend.

The Results

By the time Max and I had finished our Alpha prototype, we had introduced a whole generation of engineers to the joy and usefulness of data analytics. We were able to show where savings of several million dollars could be generated, while simultaneously developing methods to make management far more aware of the time sinks within the organisation.
This resulted in our supervisor advising our new supervisor of the work we were doing, an offer of a Ph D from UNSW and multiple presentations to executives of units.